This invention relates to information storage and retrieval systems.
Some of the advantages gained from using the techniques according to the present invention may be summarized as follows: (1) less physical storage is required, (2) faster retrieval time, (3) ease of restructuring and updating a data base, (4) ease of specifying a new retrieval criteria, and (5) ease of specifying and carrying out a process.
From the user's point of view, there are two characteristics of an embodiment of the invention which profoundly change conventional modes of dealing with an information storage and retrieval system. One characteristic concerns the absence of the need for descriptors, and another concerns file compression.
Additionally the data which is to be entered into the system for later retrieval need not be categorized, indexed, described, or even formated for the purpose of retrieval. Should the user wish to set up a structure of categories containing descriptors or indices because it makes it easier for him, he may of course do so. An important distinction here is that an embodiment of this invention need never impose such structures upon the process. Even though the system can accommodate such structures, it does not require them.
The same flexibilities characterize the making of inquiries of a memory system according to this invention. The inquirer can simply ask questions in whatever form, using whatever words occur to him. Usually the person attempting to use an information storage and retrieval system has no trouble stating his inquiry in such a way that he understands it, and in such a way that other people understand it. The difficulty arises when he tries to translate his inquiry into an equivalent question which meets the acceptance requirements imposed by conventional information storage and retrieval systems.
With prior information storage and retrieval systems, limits have to be set on the inquiry process. Since an embodiment of this invention does not impose any requirements on the inquiry process, necessary control is vested where it belongs, namely, with the user. The most important control the user exercises concerns the degree of exactness of the match between his inquiry and the contents of the data base. The maximum setting on his "degree of exactness" control would be that for an exact match. Should an exact match not be found, the system can be arranged to tell the user that the situation exists and indicate that change must be made in the exactness setting so that the inquiry will retrieve at least one relevant item.
The exactness control setting has no effect whatsoever on the search time of the holotropic memory system. However, since it indirectly controls the amount of data retrieved, it does effect the total response time in the sense that more retrieved data will take longer to display in print.
Because of the differences in the techniques of the inquiry process between traditional systems and methods and means embodying the present invention, the structure of the latter may be vastly different. In traditional retrieval information storage and retrieval systems, an inquiry can be rejected because it contains an unallowable descriptor, or because something is misspelled, or because the parts are ordered improperly, or because the inquiry is not framed according to the specifications. Thus, an inquiry can be rejected regardless of whether the information it asked for is actually in the data base. In a storage and retrieval system according to the present invention, no inquiry need ever be rejected for such reasons. The only sense in which an inquiry needs to be "rejected" is that it fails to retrieve. In other words, the data base does not contain anything which matches the inquiry at the specified level of exactness.
Another consideration for a storage and retrieval method and apparatus embodying the present invention is file compression. The nature of the system is such that the stored data may be compressed into less space than would be used to store the data with presently available techniques. This is true even if it were entered as a linear string, that is, as a single record.
A storage and retrieval system according to the present invention compresses input data by automatically taking advantage of any redundancy. In one test, a 10,000-word sample of ordinary English prose was compressed to approximately one-half the space which would have been required had the sample (without any index tables, pointers, or other artifacts) been stored as a single record in a traditional information storage and retrieval system. The exploitation of these redundancies occurs at all levels. Once a character, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or any other arbitrarily specified input element has been encountered, no subsequent occurences of that same element need be stored in their original form. Instead, the system notes that a previously encountered element has occurred again, in a manner which permits reconstitution of any or every one of the multiple input elements in its original context.
Significantly, the invention can be implemented in software, but some or all are much more efficient when implemented in microcode, and are maximally efficient when implemented directly in hardware. However, even where implemented in software or microcode, the present invention can perform more efficiently in terms of storage, speed, etc. than presently known techniques. At the hardware level, it can take full advantage of the unique properties of the latest components, such as, charge couple devices, magnetic-bubble logic, and memory, etc.
The present invention is applicable alike to large computers (for example, information storage and retrieval systems), to subsystems (for example, intelligent disk storage devices), or to very small stand-alone machines (for example, battery-driven calculators).